Chapter Nineteen
Just as Grandmama had produced a new, ultra-sophisticated-looking laptop for me to use, the door to her office flew open, which was really impressive, since the door was four hundred years old, solid oak, and about five inches thick.
“Oh my,” Astrid said under her breath at the sight of Hugh Konnor barreling into the room. “Can I help you?”
But Konnor only had eyes for me. Those intense, serious bodyguard eyes that made a girl forget that she merely a task on a list of job duties. “There you are,” he growled.
“Safe in my grandmother’s loving care,” I said, irritated that I had let him get under my skin again. That I had, even for an instant, thought he was concerned about me for other, more intimate reasons. “How are you feeling today?” I asked, for good manners’ sake, as well as to remind him that I had put his care first, after all. I didn’t just leave him in an Italian ditch, like I could have done.
He held out something in his hand. His fingers uncurled and I saw a cell phone.
For a moment, I panicked. I thought it was the one that Sergei had given me, the one presumably from Christian and the one I had kept secret from Konnor—until I knew exactly how to execute my escape plan.
But no. I recognized the phone as being the one that Konnor had used in Rome, before I hid the memory card in my bra and rendered it useless, for a short time only. “What about it?” I asked.
“We got a message. From St. Andrews’ University. In Scotland.”
I made a noise of exasperation then glared at Konnor. “Really? That’s what you came in here for? Did you call him back?”
He glanced briefly at my grandmother and then said, “Father Baldoni was your friend, and the message was for you. I thought you might want to return the call.”
My fingers clenched around the phone. Out of frustration, and resolve. No. I was not being dragged into this anymore.
“I am not going to call him back,” I informed Konnor. “This really isn’t my business now.”
“Not your business?” Konnor repeated the words back slowly, as if he was having a hard time understanding me. “Not your business, after the way that Christian has targeted you? After he keeps bombing buildings to get your attention?”
“That’s not fair,” I said. “I never asked to be involved.”
Konnor snorted. “I wonder what it must feel like.”
“What are you talking about?”
“To be a princess and have so much fucking privilege that you can just walk away from terror and injustice.”
My mouth gaped open. I felt like I had been slapped in the face, but I knew he was right. I had tremendous privilege, advantages that allowed me to hire a private jet, fly to Cape Town, escape into the bush and never be seen again. If I wanted to.
“I still don’t see why I have to be the one—”
“Because, for some fucking reason, you’re the one that Christian fucking wants to talk to.”
“Watch how you speak to my granddaughter, sir,” Astrid warned from across the room.
Konnor barely spared her a glance. “He’s obsessed with you. So whether you or I like it, that makes you the key to catching him.”
Guilt flared in my chest as I remembered Sergei’s cell phone. Maybe that was a key, but it was also my last bargaining chip for freedom.
“Fine,” I bit out. “I’ll be on the call to this professor. But I’m not flying to Scotland to look through his secret Vatican papers or anything.”
A tut-tut sound came from Astrid. “I’d like a shot at them, if you don’t.”
I rubbed my forehead and wished Konnor hadn’t brought all this up in front of my religious-history-fanatic grandmother. Poor Professor James Fergus McIntosh would probably be receiving a visit from the Dowager Duchess of Aronberg in the near future. She lived for Vatican secrets.
Yes, sometimes I wondered what it would be like to have two grandmothers who liked to knit and make cinnamon streusel cakes. It must be so lovely not to have eccentric, strong-minded grandmothers who didn’t try to control one’s life…and troves of secret Vatican papers.
Case in point: Grandmama Astrid had flipped open the new laptop she had been about to lend me and started typing something in. “We can use my secure IP to video-call the professor,” she said, demonstrating more tech savvy than my regal grandmother. “This way I can be on hand, in case you need my expertise,” she added helpfully.
Konnor shot me a confused look. “Grandmama is the former Duchess of Aronberg and also a Crusades scholar,” I explained. “She talks to professors all the time.”
Konnor didn’t look overly thrilled to have her included, but I’m sure he thought her harmless.
It was almost like he hadn’t met the women in my family before.
Professor James Fergus McIntosh answered with a jolly, Scottish-sounding greeting. I introduced myself, my “colleague” Hugh Konnor and my grandmother, Astrid Decht-Sevine. After that last name, Professor McIntosh’s eyes grew round. “Madame Decht-Sevine? Of the Decht-Sevine-Solomon-Basilica Papers?”
Konnor and I turned to gape at my grandmother.
The professor continued, “Oh, well, yes, of course. This makes sense, why Father Baldoni reached out, then. Thorough research into these topics is so very difficult, wouldn’t you say?”
Grandmama smiled serenely. “But that is what makes it so satisfying.” She leaned toward me and muttered in Driedish. “What the hell are you researching, Caroline?”
“You asked about the symbol,” Professor McIntosh said, holding up a copy of the drawing we had done for Father Baldoni in Rome.
Grandmama reached for her glasses. I nodded. “Yes, your message said you knew what it was?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure, at first. It looks incomplete, as you noticed. But since Father Baldoni suggested that it could be an early form of Masonic heraldry, I decided to start with my very oldest texts. Sure enough, as I said in the message, I believe I found an impression of it, in the Chinon Parchment.”
“I am not familiar with this?” Grandmama sounded accusatory.
“It is a papal document from 1308, signed by Pope Clement, recounting the interrogation and absolution of seventy-two Templar knights. Believe it or not, it was misfiled in the Vatican Secret Archives and was not discovered until several years ago. The only reason that I can think of as to why Father Baldoni didn’t look there himself is that there are no actual drawings in the document and he, as you know, would have been primarily concerned with illustrations.”
“But you said you found the symbol in this…scroll.” Konnor waved his hand about as he searched for the right word.
“Yes, the parchment. Well, the facsimile of the original parchment.”
“How? When there aren’t any pictures?”
“The document goes into great detail about the interrogation of the knights. What they wore, what they said. It’s practically a court document. Well, it is, in a way.”
Hugh interrupted the academic discussion before the professor could fall into a hole of fourteenth-century Inquisition history. “What did you find?”
“Ah, yes. There’s a description of four of the knights.” Professor McIntosh picked up a paper and began to read, as if he were translating as he went. “These four souls, hereby attested to the following, that they had no name, no family and no other loyalty than to their fellow companions. They lived, fought and died as mere shadows, giving voice to the supreme will of God on Earth.”
Professor McIntosh paused, seemingly caught up in the details of a seven-hundred-year-old story.
“But what about the symbol?” I pressed.
“Oh. It goes on to describe it, you see. Here.” He pointed at the page. “The four shadow souls dressed in the garments of peasants, barefoot and threadbare. Upon interrogation and searches, they were discovered to have marks on their breasts, identical all. The four-sided closed eye of Vox Umbra.”
“Vox Umbra…” Grandmother murmured.
“The Shadow Voice,” I translated.
“Quite,” Professor McIntosh agreed. “The paper further describes this symbol accurately, Your Highness. The lines from below and the horizontal direction of the diamond. And once the author called it a closed eye. I saw it then, didn’t you?”
He held up my drawing into the range of the camera and he was right. The horizontal diamond with lines extended downward did resemble a closed eyelid.
“The Shadow Voice…” I repeated. “Vox Umbra. Have you heard of this phrase before? What do you make of it?”
Professor McIntosh hesitated. “I am a scholar of Masonic history, but it is a secretive society. What we don’t know about the Knights Templar, about the secret societies that ruled Europe for nearly a thousand years, would fill yet another secret archive under the Vatican.”
“Or maybe it already does,” Astrid drawled.
The good professor chuckled. “Spoken like a true skeptic, Your Grace.”
“Have you done any other research on this, Professor?” I asked, but as soon as I produced the words, my grandmama clapped a hand over my wrist.
“Oh, he’s done too much, Caroline. Academics like Professor McIntosh have their own scholastic pursuits. Please, dear sir, do not spend another moment on this favor you have done us. We do truly appreciate your time and expertise. Tell me, what can I do in return to repay you for your trouble?”
As my grandmother and Professor McIntosh took turns humble-bragging and complimenting each other, I saw Konnor had taken Astrid’s fountain pen in his hand and was scrawling the symbol from memory in the margins of a newspaper.
Even with the information that the professor had just shared with us, I wasn’t sure that it did any good. Which is what I said as soon as Grandmama hung up on the video-call.
“I don’t even know what to do now. Our only lead is from a secret parchment that was buried under the Vatican for the last thousand years.”
Grandmama smiled benevolently. “Those are my favorite kind.”
I sighed heavily. “We’re not researching the Crusaders, Grandmama. We’re looking for a possible sociopath who left my sister at the altar. Two entirely different pursuits.”
Konnor lifted his eyebrows at me. “We?” he said, a low, careful rumble.
I pressed my lips together. It had been an accidental use of the word. “For the time being,” I said reluctantly. “Until tomorrow, at most.” After all, I hadn’t figured out where I was escaping to next. South Africa? An island in the Indian Ocean? Maybe an anonymous flat in Chicago or Atlanta. Some place where no one kept up with the everyday exploits of younger siblings of European royal families.
He said nothing else, but that was because my grandmother had just cursed out Christian Fraser-Campbell. “He’s not worthy of a Sevine woman,” she said, with a glare in my direction. I lifted my hands in innocence. I had made a lot of bad decisions in lovers, but agreeing to marry Christian Fraser-Campbell had been all my perfect big sister’s decision.
“Your Grace,” Konnor addressed my grandmother. “What do you know about all this business that Professor McIntosh was going on about?”
“The Knights Templar, the Masonic societies and the Vatican?” she smirked. “What don’t I know?”
I threw my hands up again and left the room. Konnor had opened this bag of worms. I was going to let him have it.